C. Ryu 시. 류
Futurity of the Womb: The Myth of the Cyborg Kisaeng, 2023-2025
C. Ryu is an interdisciplinary media artist using translation as a tool to map forgotten histories – to reveal psychological shadows haunting | hunting the Korean diaspora – and performs contemporary translations of rituals for the living.
C. Ryu is a co-founder and co-leader of Hwa Records, JADED (named 2022 People of the Year by the Pittsburgh City Paper), and Han Diaspora Group. These artist collectives focus on different aspects of the Asian diaspora experience and mentorship. Searching for radical existence, Ryu especially places importance on envisioning safe spaces and alternative learning models that allows her communities to dream wild, process unheard traumas, or plant grounds for new futures.
Ryu has performed, exhibited, and culturally produced at Carnegie Museum of Art; Institute of Contemporary Art, San Francisco; McDonough Museum of Art; University of Southern California; LA Art Show; Kelly Strayhorn Theater; and more. She has been the recipient of awards from the Pittsburgh Foundation, AHL Foundation, the Puffin Foundation, Opportunity Fund, Korea Foundation, as well as others. Ryu is preparing for her two new performances slated to debut in 2025, one in collaboration with her Hwa Records team at LA Phil Insight, and the other is a performance spectacle reimagining forgotten Korean goddess mythology and demonology that will debut in Pittsburgh, PA - August 30, 2025 with support from the Pittsburgh Foundation.
Ryu graduated Carnegie Mellon University with a MFA in Art and Washington University in St. Louis with a BFA in Studio Art. She has taught as an adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon University and Carlow University instructing courses such as Digitally Mediated Performance, Digital Photography, Introduction to Digital Art & Media, and Introduction to New Media.
C. Ryu is a co-founder and co-leader of Hwa Records, JADED (named 2022 People of the Year by the Pittsburgh City Paper), and Han Diaspora Group. These artist collectives focus on different aspects of the Asian diaspora experience and mentorship. Searching for radical existence, Ryu especially places importance on envisioning safe spaces and alternative learning models that allows her communities to dream wild, process unheard traumas, or plant grounds for new futures.
Ryu has performed, exhibited, and culturally produced at Carnegie Museum of Art; Institute of Contemporary Art, San Francisco; McDonough Museum of Art; University of Southern California; LA Art Show; Kelly Strayhorn Theater; and more. She has been the recipient of awards from the Pittsburgh Foundation, AHL Foundation, the Puffin Foundation, Opportunity Fund, Korea Foundation, as well as others. Ryu is preparing for her two new performances slated to debut in 2025, one in collaboration with her Hwa Records team at LA Phil Insight, and the other is a performance spectacle reimagining forgotten Korean goddess mythology and demonology that will debut in Pittsburgh, PA - August 30, 2025 with support from the Pittsburgh Foundation.
Ryu graduated Carnegie Mellon University with a MFA in Art and Washington University in St. Louis with a BFA in Studio Art. She has taught as an adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon University and Carlow University instructing courses such as Digitally Mediated Performance, Digital Photography, Introduction to Digital Art & Media, and Introduction to New Media.
C. Ryu is an interdisciplinary media artist who also responds to the titles of bad historian, spiral storyteller, and avid ghosts believer. Tracing the edges of the hidden and silenced perspectives of the past to inform the personal and political of the present, C. visualizes narratives utilizing multiple voices in tension with each other to highlight the complicated structures of empire and power while unraveling imperial illusions through geopolitical poetry.
Ryu investigates complex historical narratives, questioning who is allowed to be recorded in history. Her practice is rooted in performance, lens-based installations, experimental capture, and social practice, utilizing translation as a political tool to combat imperialism and erasure. By re-translating oral histories and re-framing ancient mythologies, Ryu aims to reveal the psychological shadows of shame and guilt that haunt diaspora communities, particularly within the Korean diasporas. Her work, in a sense, is “ghost hunting”—seeking the forgotten, erased, or overlooked individuals whose stories were often the most radical. She’s looking for those who were too loud for history.
Her recent research includes tracing and translating the life of Alice Hyun, the first Korean American to gain US citizenship through birth, through Ryu’s body of work Alice & Alice: in Free Fall (2023-2024). Born while Korea was under Japanese colonization, Hyun believed in an independent one-nation Korea. She devoted her life to independence and enrolled in the US military, working partially as a linguist during World War II. However, Hyun was later uncovered as a communist and named a double agent for North Korea. Despite her incredible life, her legacy is absent from Korean American and feminist histories in both South Korea and the United States.
Similarly, in lost | born in translation (2022-2023), Ryu brings forward the metaphorical ghost of Korea’s mythology, translating the narrative of the forgotten goddess Mago. Mago, the goddess of creation, was recorded in the Silla Empire (57 BCE - 935 CE) but was replaced with a patriarchal origin fable during the Joseon empire. Ryu researches how these political erasures echo in personal pasts, often conflating documentary and science fiction to showcase the warped nature of time in migrational storytelling.
Ryu investigates complex historical narratives, questioning who is allowed to be recorded in history. Her practice is rooted in performance, lens-based installations, experimental capture, and social practice, utilizing translation as a political tool to combat imperialism and erasure. By re-translating oral histories and re-framing ancient mythologies, Ryu aims to reveal the psychological shadows of shame and guilt that haunt diaspora communities, particularly within the Korean diasporas. Her work, in a sense, is “ghost hunting”—seeking the forgotten, erased, or overlooked individuals whose stories were often the most radical. She’s looking for those who were too loud for history.
Her recent research includes tracing and translating the life of Alice Hyun, the first Korean American to gain US citizenship through birth, through Ryu’s body of work Alice & Alice: in Free Fall (2023-2024). Born while Korea was under Japanese colonization, Hyun believed in an independent one-nation Korea. She devoted her life to independence and enrolled in the US military, working partially as a linguist during World War II. However, Hyun was later uncovered as a communist and named a double agent for North Korea. Despite her incredible life, her legacy is absent from Korean American and feminist histories in both South Korea and the United States.
Similarly, in lost | born in translation (2022-2023), Ryu brings forward the metaphorical ghost of Korea’s mythology, translating the narrative of the forgotten goddess Mago. Mago, the goddess of creation, was recorded in the Silla Empire (57 BCE - 935 CE) but was replaced with a patriarchal origin fable during the Joseon empire. Ryu researches how these political erasures echo in personal pasts, often conflating documentary and science fiction to showcase the warped nature of time in migrational storytelling.
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